Sociology&PsychologyQueerLinks

"A
Sexual Orientation Worksheet" by Ben Roe, and "Using the
Klein Scale to Teach About Sexual Orientation" by Bobbi
Keppel and Alan Hamilton are two web pages explaining the Klein
Sexual Orientation Grid, which was developed by Fritz Klein,
M.D., for his 1978 book The Bisexual Option. The Klein
Sexual Orientation Grid expands upon the more traditional Kinsey
Scale by, among other things, acknowledging that people's
sexual orientations can change over time. Please note
that Alfred Kinsey himself did not believe sexual orientations
were inherently fixed or unchanging either—he only intended
his scale to measure people's past sexual
experiences, not to imply that their orientations were
eternally fixed. The Klein Sexual Orientation Grid goes beyond
the Kinsey Scale, however, by explicitly attempting to measure
the changes in people's sexual orientations over time. It
assigns Kinsey ratings to people's past, present, and
"ideal" orientations in various categories including
sexual attraction, sexual behavior, and sexual identity.

The Multidimensional Scale of Sexuality was developed by B.
R. Berkey, T. Perelman-Hall and L. A. Kurdek, and was published
in "The Multidimensional Scale of Sexuality,"
Journal of Homosexuality, Vol. 19, pp. 67-87, 1990. Like
the Klein Sexual Orientation Grid described above, this scale too
acknowledges that people's sexual orientations can change
over time—and it offers such categories as "past
heterosexual, currently homosexual" and "past
homosexual, currently heterosexual" among its scoring
categories.

"Homosexuality:
What Kinsey Really Said" by William H. DuBay.
"Forty years after sex researcher Alfred Kinsey told us that
the world is not made up of two different kinds of people, gay
and straight, we still read in the papers, 'According to
Kinsey, one out of ten (or one out of seven or five, depending on
who is writing the piece) is homosexual.' Such statements
must have Kinsey spinning in his grave. Not only did he never
make any such statements, he went out of his way to disclaim
them. . . . Kinsey was not the first or the last to observe that
"homosexual" is a label society has invented to
stigmatize and control the behavior. He repeatedly condemned the
practice of labelling people homosexual."

"Feminine Males: A Social Construction of Suicide
Problems" by Pierre Tremblay and Richard Ramsay,
University of Calgary Faculty of Social Work, from their
collaborative work The Social Construction of Male
Homosexuality and Related Suicide Problems: Research Proposals
for the Twenty-First Century, 2000.

Numerous articles on the "Exotic Becomes Erotic" theory
of sexual orientation by Daryl J. Bem, Cornell University
Psychology Department. "Most biological theories of
homosexuality are based on the evolutionary argument that
heterosexuality is the natural consequence of reproductive
advantage and, accordingly, homosexuality is a relatively rare
evolutionary anomaly that requires additional theorizing to
account for it. In contrast, EBE theory 'deprivileges'
heterosexuality completely, viewing it as no more biologically
natural than homosexuality. Ironically, it accomplishes this by
denaturalizing both homosexuality and heterosexuality, by
insisting that they are social constructions, not hardwired
properties of the human species."—"Exotic Becomes Erotic: A
Political Postscript (Version 2.0)" by Daryl J. Bem,
excerpted from invited address at the annual meeting of the
American Psychological Association, 1997.

A very psychoanalytically-inflected book review by Lolita
Lark, from RALPH: The Review of Arts, Literature,
Philosophy and the Humanities, Vol. XIV No. 2, Summer 1998,
discussing Martin Duberman's book Midlife Queer:
Autobiography of a Decade: 1971-1981. "First off, there
is now no doubt that being gay is a personal choice—albeit,
a choice made very early on in life."

The Pink Practice
is a British Queer Counseling and Psychotherapy practice offering
"social constructionist, systemic and narrative
therapy." In other words, if you're looking for a
therapist who respects your right to choose to be queer, this is
a great place to go.

The
Ninth Street Center is an organization devoted to promoting
the work of queer psychiatrist Paul Rosenfels, who was one of the
first openly queer American psychiatrists. An important basis to
Rosenfels's theories was the fact that he learned, as the
website puts it, "to understand his homosexuality not as a
genetic defect that he was just born with, but as a logical
consequence of psychological polarity."

"A Hunger for Science: Psychoanalysis and the 'Gay
Gene'" by Ona Nierenberg, from differences,
Vol. 10 No. 1. "[Dr. Richard] Isay's goal in endorsing
the [theory of] genetic determination of homosexuality is to
ensure that homosexual men are not pathologized simply on the
basis of their same-sex desire. . . . However, this strategy can
never work, because . . . [r]eproductive heterosexuality is not
simply another trait that is genetically transmitted; it is the
foundational principle of the entire theory. It must be presumed
as the imperative of life itself for the transmission of
biological traits to even be possible. Given this fundamental and
exalted position, it is difficult to see how reproductive
sexuality and homosexuality can ever be presumed 'equal'
but 'different' within a biologically deterministic
framework. The logic of biological determinism can only debase
homosexuality as deviant—precisely the position Isay is
striving to counter."